We have mapped intracortical activity independent of sensory input using arbitrary

September 10, 2017
By cancercurehere
with Comments Off on We have mapped intracortical activity independent of sensory input using arbitrary

We have mapped intracortical activity independent of sensory input using arbitrary point channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2) stimulation and regional voltage sensitive dye imaging in B6. we found that the strength of reciprocal intracortical connections between primary and secondary sensory areas are unequal, with connections from primary to secondary sensory areas being stronger than the reciprocal. imaging, network analysis, reciprocal connections, Amiloride hydrochloride IC50 connectivity, cortical mapping, voltage sensitive dye Introduction Functional relationships between brain areas have been deduced through an elegant combination of structural, electrophysiological, and lesion/inactivation studies (Shepherd et al., 2005; Douglas and Martin, 2007). Recently, efforts have begun to exhaustively sample cortical structure at the synaptic, cellular, and regional level to derive maps of cortical wiring (Bohland et al., 2009). In contrast to structural analysis, functional connectivity studies are often restricted to evaluating areas with well-documented sensory input or behavioral links, and have not necessarily sampled connections between multiple arbitrary locations. In brain slices, arbitrary point microstimulation mapping techniques involving glutamate uncaging (Callaway and Katz, 1993; Fino and Yuste, 2011), or channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2), have been employed to elucidate laminar (Weiler et al., 2008), and transcallosal (Petreanu et al., 2007) associations in neocortex. Functional mapping between specific sites has been performed through electrical microstimulation (Ferezou et al., 2007; Histed et al., 2009), and combining optogenetic stimulation with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI; Lee et al., 2010; Logothetis et al., 2010; Desai et al., 2011; Kahn et al., 2011), yet electrical microstimulation is limited in the number Amiloride hydrochloride IC50 of regions that can be sampled quickly, and fMRI has limited temporal resolution. With these limitations in mind, our goal was to develop an approach that would allow for arbitrary point functional mapping while maintaining relatively high spatiotemporal resolution. Here we describe an automated approach to assess intrahemispheric and interhemispheric functional relationships by the activation of a subset of ChR2-expressing deep layer cortical neurons in transgenic mice (Arenkiel et al., 2007; Ayling et al., 2009). These mice represent the best current model for reproducible arbitrary point cortical activation over wide spatial scales. Previous work by our lab (Ayling et al., 2009) using comparisons to other well known mouse strains such as the YFP-H line (Feng et al., 2000), and work from the original developers (Wang et al., 2007) has shown that these transgenic animals robustly express ChR2 within layer 5 pyramidal neurons, as well as other minority cell populations throughout the neocortex. Although ChR2 is usually expressed in axons of passage and exhibits some variability in expression levels across the cortex (Wang et al., 2007; Ayling et al., 2009), these transgenic mice may have advantages over multiple viral injections due to incomplete sampling and potential for tissue damage at each injection site. To monitor intracortical activity, fluorescent calcium indicator proteins (Mank et Amiloride hydrochloride IC50 al., 2008; Tian et al., 2009; Lutcke et al., 2010), or recombinant voltage Amiloride hydrochloride IC50 sensors (Perron et al., 2009; Akemann et al., 2010; Borghuis et al., 2011; Minderer et al., 2012) provide the potential to record cell-specific signals. However, these recombinant sensors do not currently offer the ability to monitor activity over large spatial scales (up to 50?mm2) and with high time resolution without XLKD1 regional variation being introduced due to differences in virus-injection dependent sensor expression. Small molecule calcium indicators have provided much insight into developmental and local synchronized activity (Golshani et al., 2009), but due to the need to apply bolus loading techniques have been restricted to smaller fields of view (0.3?mm2). Therefore, we have chosen to monitor regional cortical activity using organic voltage sensitive dyes (VSD; London et al., 1989; Kleinfeld and Delaney, 1996; Shoham et al., 1999; Petersen et al., 2003a). Using this approach, we show that point photostimulation of deep layer pyramidal neuronal subsets in functionally identified primary sensory cortices reveals cortical maps which are archetypal of the maps obtained via sensory stimulation. We extend the point stimulation to arbitrary areas targeting association cortices and secondary somatosensory regions that are inaccessible to direct stimulation via the senses. We apply graph theory and complex network analysis to connection matrices derived from these self-assembled, functional maps to elucidate reciprocal connections between primary and secondary sensory areas, identify network hubs, and determine asymmetries in intracortical connectivity..